It is very easy to get lost in your everyday work, without taking the time to review what has been done so far. It is vital to look back over the days, weeks, months and years to figure out what has been successful and what has not. This is how your business can learn, and more importantly – grow. This is why keeping track of data is important, which means you need to have the right processes in place in which to record it. Of course, it will also need to be analysed before providing any conclusions, so keep this in mind too.
So how can you go about collecting data, and why is it important? This blog post will investigate…
Customer feedback
Whether you provide a B2B or B2C product or service, you will want your client to be happy with their experience. There are so many ways to go about getting feedback from customers, whether numerical or in the written form. There are plenty of tools online where you can create surveys that get emailed out to customers, or you can ask them about their experience after a phone call. You will know what types of metrics are most important to you, so seek out a way to implement the correct processes. You will start to identify all sorts of helpful data including how well your customer service or sales teams work, what people actually think about your service or product, and whether your pricing is reasonable.
Website analytics
If you have a company website that is used for generating leads or sales, do you know how effective it is? There are so many tools out there that can be used for assessing the performance of a website, and many of them are actually free. For example, Google Analytics will give you an overview of the most vital statistics, such as number of visitors and even conversion information. It is always beneficial for a business to understand where the majority of sales are coming from, so see whether there is room for improvement in this area.
Sales targets and figures
Self service business intelligence (self-service BI) tools will allow you to bring lots of different sets of data together, but it would be of the opinion of many CEOs that the most important set belongs to the area of sales. These statistics should be examined on a very regular basis, and as a senior member of staff you should know them off the top of your head. Sales targets are set to be hit and surpassed, and you will have to wonder why they aren’t if it is the same story month-on-month. Reviewing this will give you the ability to make changes before it is too late.
Client acquisition and retention
In line with this, do you know how many new customers you have had in a certain period? How many have you lost? You will always want to see the first figure rising, and the second decreasing; it makes for a much better business practice. If you aren’t seeing this trend, it is time to think about how you can change this, and quickly.
